New Blood
by HayashiOkami
Summary: Junichiro wanted to become a ghoul investigator ever since he read that news article about the big raids and advancements they were making in other parts of the country, like Tokyo. On his first mission, he finds out that all of the training in the world couldn't have prepared him for this. [OC cast, two-shot]
1. Blizzard

**New Blood**

 _Junichiro wanted to become a ghoul investigator ever since he read that news article about the big raids and advancements they were making in other parts of the country, like Tokyo. On his first mission, he finds out that all of the training in the world couldn't have prepared him for this._ [Two-shot]

* * *

Junichiro still felt as if his inner organs were going to crawl up his throat along with the bile dripping out of his mouth. He would never have imagined a person could experience such pain without sporting any injuries worse than a few scrapes and bruises. Never in his life had he thought watching someone die would make him feel as if he had died with them.

Hot tears blurred his vision as he pressed his back firmly against the wall of the hospital's hallway. A nurse nearly ran over his toes with a heavy metal cart earlier. Surgeons with their scrubs still stained by blood - fresh red mingled with nearly black, dried blood - ran through the halls to start stabilizing the next investigator's vitals so that he or she wouldn't die before reaching the operating room.

Junichiro couldn't smell the blood anymore, he realized with a jolt and a shiver. He watched a young nurse practically running just across the hallway. She had a cooler wrapped tight in her arms. He didn't want to know what it was for.

For what seemed like hours he stood in that small area of the hospital and stood with his hands clamped over his ears to block out the sounds of people - his coworkers, some his friends - dying.

Eventually began to regain his sense of smell. The scent of antiseptic was the first one to crawl up his nose, practically burning him. When he opened his eyes, wondering when he closed them in the first place, he saw the grizzled face of his superior, Rank 1 Investigator Watanabe.

The man's creased features crinkled in clearly apparent rage - probably scarier than the red and black eyed ghouls they fought earlier in the night. Junichiro flinched, but there was nowhere to run.

 _ **"Run, Jun! Run!"**_

 _ **"Drop your quinque; it's useless now, just GO!"**_

He wanted...he wanted to scream again. But as an almost completely uninjured person in the midst of moaning, shrieking men and women who had lost limbs and eyes and organs, he had no right to vent his grief.

"Tsumoto Junichiro. Look at me." Watanabe's voice was harder than quinque steel. Junichiro swallowed, tasting vomit, and obeyed.

At once, Watanabe seized him by the shoulders in a grip so hard he was left gasping for air like a dying fish, bright flashes of pain shooting up and down his arms and back. He hardly had a chance to take a single breath before he was slammed against the wall. A sharp crack bounced off the wall opposite them and returned to his ears with a ringing sound.

He realized that it was his head that had smacked against it only after the dull pain began to seep into his head. Blinking dazedly forward, he strained to catch Watanabe's words.

"You brainless idiot! Why did you do it!?"

"I..." Do it? Do what? Junichiro struggled to force words out of his mouth, finding that it was hard to breathe, like he had walked straight into a block of jello and was surrounded on all sides. The screaming he heard earlier between the thin walls was, at least, no more than an echo.

"Why did you hesitate!?"

Junichiro couldn't help it. He coughed once in response and one second later he was dry heaving onto the rank 1 investigator's shoes, shivering like he was still out there in the blizzard. A slap over his head brought his attention back to his superior sluggishly.

"I...I..."

The terrified, teary face of a girl with her hair tied in a ponytail came to mind. Her eyes were a perfectly normal brown and senseless pleas fell from her lips as Junichiro held his quinque before her trembling body.

He had a sister her age. Sayoko was fourteen-years-old and all she cared about when Junichiro came home to visit was what CD or shoddily selected clothes he had bought for her.

Watanabe's hands fell from his shoulders and Junichiro finally fell to the floor on his knees, ignoring how his joints burned.

"It's your fault that they're dead. Kanzaki and Sudo held that ghoul back and let you escape."

Junichiro had been taught not to hesitate when killing ghouls. But this was his first real field mission, his first time killing anything bigger than a rat.

He hesitated and those two took the blow that should have been meant for him. He had felt Sudo's blood splash at his fingertips as he fled. Maybe pieces of her were still stuck in his hair?

"If you feel you aren't up to the job, you can always quit." It wasn't a suggestion. Watanabe sounded less furious, but his voice was still harsh. "This job isn't for everyone. Some just can't stop seeing their human mask."

It took a moment, but Junichiro gasped and finally let out a sharp sob that caught in his throat and made his chest ache. Watanabe was allowing him to resign, allowing him to return to the oblivious and relatively peaceful civilian life.

Junichiro held his body still long enough to coordinate it and shake his head.

"I-I can't. They...then they would have died for nothing!" he screamed high enough for his throat to hurt afterwards. Watanabe kneeled down with a grunt. His right hand shot out and grasped Junichiro by the shoulder again, but he barely felt more than a throb of pain.

"Then you must stop seeing those creatures human."

"I-I don't..."

"You do. Otherwise you wouldn't have hesitated!"

The girl, scrambling away from him, calling for her mother. People screaming, Sudo's blood on his hands. He blinked the images away.

"I know it's hard to ignore. It gets even the best of us sometimes."

Junichiro spared him a half-hearted glare. Watanabe chuckled darkly and moved his hand to ruffle his hair like Junichiro was a little boy - maybe he was one, in the older man's eyes. But then his whole demeanor shifted back to deadly conviction.

"Look at it this way. Think of a termite."

"A termite...?" Junichiro mouthed, barely saying the word. His superior let out a dark chuckle.

"Alone, they're pretty harmless. They're tiny. Just one sneaking into your house isn't going to do anything. You won't even see it. But when they multiply and you finally notice you have them, you don't just leave them alone. Of course they don't harm you directly, but you need to exterminate the colony before your whole house comes down around your head and really does kill you."

Junichiro exhaled a shaky breath. He didn't even know what a termite looked like, up close. Just that they were small and they could ruin your house.

"Watanabe-san..." he murmured.

"Tsumoto-kun, ghouls are even worse than animals. What animal slaughters dozens of other animals without any intention of eating them? You saw what happened tonight. An entire town was wiped off the map by just a few ghouls. You know, down in Tokyo they've done experiments. They have that detention facility called Cochlea. They found out that ghouls don't need to eat everyday like we do. Do you get it yet?"

Junichiro noticed that his hands were shaking as he lifted them before his eyes, staring at the blood that clung to him like dried mud. None of it was his own.

"Ghouls are monsters in human skins. They kill far more than even serial killers - and there are far more ghouls than serial killers. Yet, when there's a hostage situation you don't hesitate to snipe the criminal responsible in order to save those people. You remember that overseas shooting that happened last year? That's how much death we get from a single ghoul that goes on a surplus killing."

Junichiro nodded and winced. A school shooting. It happened in another country and he had only read about it briefly on the internet. He wasn't a parent so maybe he couldn't really understand, but his mother had fallen silent for just a moment - weird for the usual, chatty her. When he left home that weekend, she hugged him and Sayoko tight, embarrassing them both.

But then he thought of that crying girl and balked.

Watanabe narrowed his eyes as if he could read his thoughts. "You know, when an animal loses its young, the mother forgets all about it soon enough. They're not like us."

He nodded. Watanabe had to be right. They looked so human it hurt, but no human had tentacles and tails that could rip even steel in two.

He remembered something hitting him in the back of the head as he was running. As he lifted a hand to touch his own head, Watanabe suddenly grabbed his wrist and forced it down. After he was assured that Junichiro wouldn't try it again, the older man got to his feet with a groan.

"Get your head checked out, just in case of a concussion. If you don't show up to work on Monday I'll take that as an indicator of your resignation."

As his superior walked away, Junichiro curled into a tight ball and cried.

"Sudo-san...Kanzaki-san...I'm sorry...I'm so sorry!" he said in a muffled scream. Burying his face into his coat made it harder to breathe, but he welcomed the sting of oxygen deprivation in his chest. "It should have been me...You shouldn't have saved a useless person like me!"

He looked up, but no one heard him scream.

Now he understood why his partner, the young man who tried to jump off the roof of their office the other week, sometimes wore an empty smile with distant eyes. Why sometimes he looked fondly at Junichiro like he pitied him.

He could return to a normal life again. Except that he couldn't. Was he supposed to leave the CCG behind him, render Kanzaki and Sudo's deaths for naught?

He thought of the people who lived in that town. Had they suffered? Had they screamed? By the time they arrived, the snow had muffled everything, even many of the bodies that had to be strewn across the streets. The snow absorbed sound - anyone who grew up all the way up north knew that.

Someone in the office had once told him, after he had been caught staring at his partner in curiosity one morning, that his partner's hometown had met a similar fate. Only a few hundred from a village of three thousand people had survived the nightmare.

Junichiro cried until he had no tears left, until he was sitting on the floor trembling, his body occasionally jerking when a dry sob seized him.

Eventually his partner appeared before him. Junichiro had to reach out to make sure his thin form wasn't a ghost. Yuzuru merely smiled and took his hand, crouching down and shuffling closer to him to avoid getting trampled.

"Hey," his partner chimed softly. "You okay?"

Junichiro nodded stiffly as Yuzuru moved to sit next to him. It was always a bit hard to believe that Yuzuru was older than him, but that was only because the other young man was short. Now he couldn't help but feel that they were dwelling in two different worlds.

"I couldn't do anything..." Junichiro mumbled forlornly. "I just froze."

Yuzuru hummed low in his throat. The vibrations could barely be called a tune.

"What can any of us do against ghouls, really?" Yuzuru said in a quiet voice. Junichiro turned to see that his partner wasn't smiling. His shoulders were slumped, too. Junichiro had always seen him as one of those people - those impenetrable investigators he heard of in rumors from the south. Well, Sapporo had a few as well, to be fair.

No one had expected this ghoul infestation to be so bad, though, so the real pros hadn't been called in. No, at this time of year those few talented investigators spent most of their time rooting through the mountains, looking for ghouls taking advantage of the bad weather.

Junichiro sighed. Not that he ever thought he could become one of those guys, but today he found out that he couldn't even lift his quinque against a ghoul, not even when his comrades had been torn apart in front of him.

Yuzuru reached out and hesitantly patted him on the head. Though Junichiro scowled, he let the older man do as he pleased.

"I thought you were really brave, but also really stupid, to become an investigator even though you were originally a civvy," Yuzuru said with a weak laugh.

"I'm nothing but a coward," Junichiro spat bitterly, curling his knees tighter to his chest. "I let my own comrades get killed because I couldn't..."

"Oh, but aren't we all cowards?"

"Huh?"

Yuzuru leaned closer to him and spoke in a whisper even though not a single soul would have bothered listening to them even if they were screaming at each other. "I'll tell you a secret. The reason why I became an investigator."

"You...it's because your family was killed by ghouls, right?"

Yuzuru nodded, something dark flickering in his eyes for a moment. He only saw it because of the bright white lighting in here. "That's certainly part of it. But I really did it because I was scared. You know, when you get orphaned and go to the academy, you aren't forced to become an investigator. Some people become doctors or something. I chose it, though, because I was scared..."

Scared...? Scared of...

Multicolored abominations called kagune, the red and black eyes and the flesh and blood that hung from their mouths. Yeah, Junichiro understood.

"I tried the civilian thing for a little while," Yuzuru admitted, making Junichiro turn to him with wide eyes.

When did he have time...?

"It was only for two weeks. You see, the problem with people like us...well, even though I went back to being a normal person, I wasn't. After you see those things, you...you never feel safe again. Anyone you meet could be a ghoul. Anyone standing next to you could be torn apart at any second. So I, I went back. To be an investigator."

Junichiro turned to the far wall and rested his head against the one at his back. It throbbed a bit now, his head, and his muscles were beginning to relax. But the next time he walked amongst a crowd of people, all wearing the same pleasant smiles, would he be able to do it without flinching or feeling like he was about to burst from the anticipation?

"Once, Watanabe-san told me this job is like going to war..." Yuzuru continued. "A lot of people who go to war return to it. For a lot of different reasons, of course. You heard mine. What's yours?"

Junichiro looked down at his hands and felt another wave of heat rush through his chest. When he spoke, his voice was already nasally.

"I can't - I won't let anyone who I call my comrade die again. I won't be useless again."

"That's impossible," Yuzuru said immediately afterwards. Then, his voice softened. It was low on the register and Junichiro sighed as it spoke to him. "But you can make yourself stronger. It might not ever be enough, but it'll give you a fighting chance. You might live another day."

"Might live another day..." Junichiro repeated. "I can't let Suda-san and Kanzaki-san's deaths go to waste..."

Even though there was no guarantee he wouldn't freeze the next time he found a young ghoul he had to kill, still...

"I'll go back to work on Monday," Junichiro said thickly. "I can't leave you alone, after all. Or you'll be the next body we're scraping off the pavement."

"Haha, that's good! That's good! Jokes are great!" Yuzuru laughed. "By the way, the jumping off the roof thing? That was kinda a joke...I don't really want to-"

"What!? You - you don't just joke about things like that!"

Life wouldn't get any easier. In the future he would have to sit on the floor of the hospital crying his eyes out over people he couldn't save again. He would have to kill that thing inside him that saw his sister when he saw a ghoul that looked like her.

But there was no other choice for him now. No going back.

* * *

I like exploring the minds of ghoul investigators.

In case it wasn't clear, Kanzaki blocked the blow for Junichiro. Suda was torn apart and sent flying, which is how some blood (and other bits...) got on Jun's head.

Junichiro (Tsumoto) and Yuzuru are from my other TG story, _And the Petals Fall_. This two-shot occurs when they were younger (and still lived in Hokkaido). When Jun says that Yuzuru is older, the age difference is really only about 1-2 years. Also, I forgot to write their Hokkaido dialect into this story and _And the Petals Fall._ D: Erm, I might go back and change that eventually.

So yeah there's one more chapter left, but it's going to be short.


	2. But the Sky Will Clear

**But the Sky Will Clear**

* * *

It has been four years since his partner died. Junichiro finds himself musing about the transient nature of life itself more often than he did in the past, to the point that he wouldn't be surprised if he looks in the mirror one day and sees an old man staring back at him.

Junichiro will turn twenty-seven this winter. It feels as if he has already lived through an entire lifetime.

The penultimate step in an investigator's career is, they say, to become a mentor and lose your first student in the blaze of battle. All that comes afterwards is merely a bonus.

Junichiro has never fit the mould of the average ghoul investigator. But not because he is exceptionally talented or stupid. It's because he started as a civilian looking for a prestigious job where he could do some good for the world and sate the burning desire to do more than sit in a koban in his hometown for the rest of his life.

Somehow, he has survived. He bears the marks of his mistakes in the form of scars. Some line his chest and back, others wrap neatly around an arm or a leg like a tattoo. A few ache in the biting cold of Hokkaido's deep winters.

His wife dislikes those scars. Not for superficial reasons, but for the memories they carry of disappointments and failures. Each has a story, but the two most important ones are missing.

One for Yuzuru, who fulfilled his final wish without even saying goodbye.

[Junichiro isn't fooled. The reports say a ghoul killed him, but Junichiro found his body before anyone else and ghouls don't bother to pose a corpse to make it look like the owner stabbed himself in his own heart.]

The second is for his student, who died of frostbite incurred when their patrol got caught in a sudden snowstorm.

[Stupid kid. She should have said something was wrong. That she couldn't feel her feet or her toes or her limbs anymore...?]

Junichiro has and has not reached that step, the height of the investigator's career, the point at which nothing can surprise them anymore because they have seen it all.

This is a lie, of course. Seeing friends' organs fly across the room, tangle in the light fixtures, to see their mouths open in a silent scream, never becomes any less painful a sight. Junichiro like all that have come before him, has merely gotten better at compartmentalizing that information.

He still goes to the psychiatrist once a month. Still talks to the same old woman who has been at this job since way before he even considered becoming an investigator. They talk for less than a minute, she gives him a prescription, and he leaves to make room for the line of other men and women that wait outside the door.

He takes the pills, sometimes, when the nights are cold and the bed is lonely despite the soft snores of his wife next to him.

"The job never gets easier. If it does ever get too easy, that's your cue to back out of it while you still can." He told his student this on her first day as a real investigator. She wasn't as bright-eyed and eager as himself, when he was her age. She came from the academy and that was all he ever knew about her past.

Perhaps that was why she frowned in confusion at his words even when he began to explain his reasoning.

The 'job' getting easier - if cutting down ghouls that look human and seeing comrades split into a million pieces ever became 'easy' - it probably meant something inside yourself was dying, too.

Junichiro tread through the crowd of survivors of the latest ghoul attack on a small seaside town. They had discovered the colony a few months ago, but infiltration proved difficult, as the residents up here have never been too keen on letting ghoul investigators looking for evidence that doesn't exist.

Just because they don't want us snooping around doesn't mean they're ghouls, he'd told his student.

This time is no different from any other. Junichiro sees children huddled in small groups, crying their eyes out, adults groaning at them to shut it. He sees people scream and others fall so deathly quiet they seem to have turned into living ghosts.

And he sees a small boy. No older than ten, eleven at most, and he sees the fire that claws at his heart through his eyes.

Junichiro walks up to him and hands him a handkerchief to wipe the blood away from his eyes, at least. The child shivers, but not from the cold. It's summertime and the weather is pleasant, only a bit chilly so late at night.

The boy's hair is a ruffled mess that looks natural, as if he has always had trouble taming it. Perhaps his mother once spent a considerable amount of time trying to tame it for school photos. As a boy, he had probably tried to swat her hands away with a whine.

He crouches low and waits for the child to speak.

Finally, he does.

"...how can I..."

The boy never finishes his words, but Junichiro feels his heard clench and go stone cold. Those aren't the words he wants to hear. 'Why' and 'this can't be' are normal responses. He knows that anything punctuated with 'how' cannot be good.

Junichiro shakes his head and leans down to make sure the boy is looking at him. His eyes brim with tears, but Junichiro can see the hatred and the anger bubbling at the surface.

"Don't," he tells the boy harshly, startling the child. "Don't think about revenge."

"Why - !"

"People much wiser than you or I have said this before: 'When you go on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves.' It won't make you happy or bring your parents back."

Tiny sobs reach his ears, but Junichiro does not reach out to comfort him.

"You will never forget this night for as long as you live. That's natural. But you're still alive, are you not? It may not be an easy one, but you still have a future ahead of you."

Junichiro once thought he had no future. That once one has seen violence, it changes them forever. But he was wrong, once again.

"Look at me. What's your name?"

"...Ishikawa Sora," the boy mumbles.

"Sora-kun, listen. Is there something you want to become when you get older? Like a doctor or a lawyer?"

The boy blinks. He is sufficiently puzzled to have stopped crying already.

"A teacher."

Teacher? Better than Junichiro's plans of becoming a politician, long ago. He would have hated it.

"Do you think it's impossible to become a teacher now?"

"...No...but..."

"It might be harder," Junichiro concedes. "But going through tough times doesn't mean you can't be a teacher anymore. Right?"

The boy hesitates, then nods.

Junichiro finally reaches out to smooth the boy's hair out. As he predicted, the child shied away with a pout.

"Don't give up," he says. "Your parents would want you to be happy, someday. No good parent wants to see their child throw his life away for something petty like revenge."

As Junichiro walks away, he can only hope that the boy takes some of it to heart. Maybe he will listen and become a teacher. Maybe he won't, and Junichiro will have to train him in a few years himself.

But if there's anything Junichiro has learned in his whole career, it's that the words 'it's too late' or 'it's hopeless' are used far too frequently in this line of work.

There are people who live through far harsher, crueler things in this world than he has, who manage to lead lives they can be proud of.

When Junichiro visits Yuzuru's family grave at the cemetery, he doesn't tell his old friend all that he has learned to prove the words he once spoke to Junichiro wrong. He tells him of the happy moments of his married life, about his two children who are growing up day-by-day. How he's thinking of taking a teaching job to spend more time with them.

He doesn't tell Yuzuru how the world has changed because it hasn't, really, changed that much.

But maybe it will, one day. Maybe those people Junichiro fought to save will change it.

* * *

Junichiro got kind of preachy and reflective in his old age (lol, he's only 27!). Mh this is pretty much him trying to come to terms with his life and his job and the fact that everyone once told him that there was only one path available to him after witnessing such violence, and that was to face forward and destroy the thing that threatens him. He realizes this is wrong now.

He'll probably never get to the point where he can stop wanting to destroy ghouls, nor to the point where he will be willing to understand them. He's changed quite a bit, so this is impossible for him now. But he still believes in humanity and as he says, maybe by saving some people, those people will be able to change instead.

Also, I didn't really like this one so I wrote a second version (the third chapter) but I think that one might be boring to others in retrospect so I just decided to post both of them. The first part is the same on both, so I'll italicize what's the same in the next chapter.


	3. The Crane that Dances in the Snow

**The Crane that Dances in the Snow**

* * *

 _It has been four years since his partner died. Junichiro finds himself musing about the transient nature of life itself more often than he did in the past, to the point that he wouldn't be surprised if he looks in the mirror one day and sees an old man staring back at him._

 _Junichiro will turn twenty-seven this winter. It feels as if he has already lived through an entire lifetime._

 _The penultimate step in an investigator's career is, they say, to become a mentor and lose your first student in the blaze of battle. All that comes afterwards is merely a bonus._

 _Junichiro has never fit the mould of the average ghoul investigator. But not because he is exceptionally talented or stupid. It's because he started as a civilian looking for a prestigious job where he could do some good for the world and sate the burning desire to do more than sit in a koban in his hometown for the rest of his life._

 _Somehow, he has survived. He bears the marks of his mistakes in the form of scars. Some line his chest and back, others wrap neatly around an arm or a leg like a tattoo. A few ache in the biting cold of Hokkaido's deep winters._

 _His wife dislikes those scars. Not for superficial reasons, but for the memories they carry of disappointments and failures. Each has a story, but the two most important ones are missing._

 _One for Yuzuru, who fulfilled his final wish without even saying goodbye._

 _[Junichiro isn't fooled. The reports say a ghoul killed him, but Junichiro found his body before anyone else and ghouls don't bother to pose a corpse to make it look like the owner stabbed himself in his own heart.]_

 _The second is for his student, who died of frostbite incurred when their patrol got caught in a sudden snowstorm._

 _[Stupid kid. She should have said something was wrong. That she couldn't feel her feet or her toes or her limbs anymore...?]_

 _Junichiro has and has not reached that step, the height of the investigator's career, the point at which nothing can surprise them anymore because they have seen it all._

 _This is a lie, of course. Seeing friends' organs fly across the room, tangle in the light fixtures, to see their mouths open in a silent scream, never becomes any less painful a sight. Junichiro, like all who have come before him, has merely gotten better at compartmentalizing that information._

 _He still goes to the psychiatrist once a month. Still talks to the same old woman who has been at this job since way before he even considered becoming an investigator. They talk for less than a minute, she gives him a prescription, and he leaves to make room for the line of other men and women waiting outside the door._

 _He takes the pills, sometimes, when the nights are cold and the bed is lonely despite the soft snores of his wife next to him._

 _"The job never gets easier. If it does ever get too easy, that's your cue to back out of it while you still can." He told his student this on her first day as a real investigator. She wasn't as bright-eyed and eager as himself, when he was her age. She came from the academy and that was all he ever knew about her past._

 _Perhaps that was why she frowned in confusion at his words even when he began to explain his reasoning._

 _The 'job' getting easier - if cutting down ghouls that look human and seeing comrades split into a million pieces ever became 'easy' - it probably meant something inside yourself was dying, too._

"Niimi-san told me that a few months after I my first time out on the field."

"Wasn't that 'cause you were being wishy-washy?" his student had uttered. Her voice was never soft and refined like 'proper lady'. But Junichiro liked that honesty. It was always far better than trying to figure out whether or not Yuzuru was actually serious about killing himself.

Junichiro had laughed because that is exactly why Niimi Shizuka took a moment out of her day to warn him it was still okay to back out.

Niimi is one of those special people Junichiro has always admired. Strong and dedicated to the job, as one of the elite she occupies a prestigious spot on a pedestal that no normal man can reach.

Unlike some other elites Junichiro has met, Niimi is down-to-earth, easy to understand and read. She is constantly wrapped in a cloak of formality and carries herself with a great, refined arch in her back like the white curve of a crane's neck.

Niimi Shizuka, for all her boisterous laughter and love of anything cute from the newest recruit to paper snowflakes, is someone you either loved or hated.

Junichiro goes out for drinks with the other rank 1 investigators, and sometimes Niimi is there with the squad filled with special people like herself. She doesn't flit between ranks, doesn't get raving drunk like some of the men. Junichiro does end up speaking to her sometimes, though, if the two of them happen to drift away from their respective groups.

Like tonight. They're sipping on warm sake. One of Junichiro's subordinates, a new guy from Kyoto whose speech no one can understand, ordered cold sake. In the middle of winter! Junichiro hopes for his sake that they don't have a patrol to the mountainous regions coming up. He won't last long.

Niimi doesn't speak or even turn to him for some time. She is contemplating what to say - he can tell by the way she opens her mouth and promptly shuts it at least five times.

Finally, she speaks.

"I'm sorry about your student."

"Don't be, it's her own damn fault for not telling anyone." Junichiro mumbles because it's a lie.

"Did you go to her funeral?"

"Of course." She has no one else left to go to her funeral but her mentor and the few friends of hers from the academy who were stationed here.

"Do do ever think about retiring?"

Junichiro raises a brow. Odd, coming from one of the highest ranking investigators in their region of the country. "To teach at the academy, maybe. I have two kids now and well, you know how it is."

Niimi nods with a small smile on her lips. "My mother was an investigator. She was never home, so I despised her until the day she died. That's why I don't want kids."

Never mind the fact that Niimi probably doesn't know anyone who would want to give her kids, anyways. But Junichiro doesn't say that because not all women feel the same way about children - his wife wanted some desperately but others like his sister Sayoko certainly don't.

"I heard you lost Jihara recently," Junichiro says. Well, if they're on the topic of dead subordinates...

Niimi grimaces. She shoves a lock of short black hair behind her ear, but it just falls back into place. "It's my fault."

"It is."

Junichiro doesn't deny it and Niimi doesn't flinch or even scowl. This is how things work up here, in Hokkaido. Junichiro worked in Tokyo for a time after Yuzuru's death and he knows that Tokyo is full of colorful people. Everyone there is different, some crazy and others calm and efficient, some prideful or outspoken.

In Hokkaido, everything is quiet and cut-and-dry. Watanabe hates office politics, that's why.

So he calls Niimi out on her blunders, just as everyone in her squad has probably been doing.

"I heard you left him to fend for himself."

"He should have been able to handle it. That ghoul - it was intelligent and strong. I had to sneak around it if we were to win," she says coldly. Her voice is as harsh and bitter as the winter winds, like an icebreaker cutting through the harbor.

If Yuzuru were still around...

The quinque his partner once used broke in the hands of someone less experienced.

"You stabbed him with your quinque."

"I told him to hold it in place. He should have moved." She doesn't sound desperate, exactly, but she flashes a glare at him.

"Not everyone is as good as you are at things like that."

Niimi slumps and downs the rest of her sake in one gulp. "...Yeah, I know. He should have worked harder, trained more. Jihara had potential. It's not like I was born talented, you know."

But Junichiro doesn't know.

They're quiet for a while.

"You..."

"Hm?" Junichiro hums in response.

"You never wanted to get revenge for your partner's death." It isn't a question.

Junichiro frowns for a moment because Yuzuru killed himself and there is probably no one to blame but himself, who wasn't there for him. Then he remembers the mission report - a ghoul killed Yuzuru. Right. All the evidence of a fight had been there, after all.

"...No," Junichiro mutters. "As they say, 'Before you embark on a journey for revenge, dig two graves.' It's never been my intention to die."

"Well, that's one thing you're better at than me," Niimi laughs humorlessly. "Watanabe is pissed at me. Research wanted that ghoul's kakuho, but..."

Niimi had stabbed that ghoul so many times (without even killing it, mind you) that when her teammates arrived at the scene, they had to pull her off it and cut its head off to put it out of its misery.

[why are they all so broken]

[what went wrong, where-

where did their humanity go?]

Did the ghouls steal that from them, too?

Niimi sighs. "I told him I was sorry, for what it's worth. That I'd watch his kids grown up in his stead. That I wouldn't let them become investigators."

"That's good," Junichiro agrees because it's all one can say in such a situation. He knows that, even if Niimi never wanted natural children of her own, she'll look after those kids as if they are hers. She's known for that. Her recklessness might get you killed, but she'll do anything you ask of her in return.

Just like a crane, she dances in the snow and stalks her prey with the grace of a hunter and a flier. Nimi is beautiful like one of those birds, but Junichiro will never go near that beauty if he can help it.

No, he's learned that getting involved in the lives of your comrades never gets you anywhere except for heartache when they're gone.

* * *

This is the alternate chapter and while I like Niimi, I'm not sure this conversation is actually exciting to read...?

Niimi is associated with the crane because cranes are (a) long lived and she's known for surviving basically any situation, partially because she pulls off asshole-ish stunts like the one mentioned here, and (b) cranes don't often swallow their food whole like other birds, they like to tear it into pieces and eat those instead and Niimi gets kind of violent when one of her subordinates dies.


End file.
